Hot Topics:

Broncos, Bengals taking advantage of size on outside

By Jeff Legwold The Denver Post

Posted:
11/03/2012 10:54:23 PM MDT

Updated:
11/03/2012 10:54:57 PM MDT

Herm Edwards was an NFL cornerback for 10 years. He stood 6-foot tall and weighed 194 pounds. His career ended in 1986. Broncos star Champ Bailey has spent the past 14 years in the league and been to 11 Pro Bowls, an NFL record for cornerbacks. He stands 6-foot tall and weighs 192 pounds.

"Right there's your problem," said Edwards, an NFL analyst for ESPN. "You want to know why the passing numbers are going up and up and up? A big part of it is right there. Cornerbacks in the league, the best cornerbacks in the league, are the same size right now as they were in the 1970s. When I played, the average cornerback was about 5-11 and now the average cornerback is about 5-11. And receivers? They ain't 5-11. No, receivers ain't anywhere close.

"Receivers are bigger, taller and stronger. You've got guys who look like power forwards on the outside now and quarterbacks these days are throwing passes they never would have thought about throwing 20, 30 years ago because these guys just go up over the smaller guy and get them."

The trend will be on full display Sunday at Cincinnati's Paul Brown Stadium. The Bengals will line up 6-4, 207-pound wide receiver A.J. Green against a Denver secondary featuring Bailey as its tallest cornerback.

That's just one game of many in a league where the scales, figuratively and literally, are tipped convincingly toward wide receivers.

"It's every week, and to me that's the difference," Bailey said. "When I first came in the league (in 1999), you would see a 6-4, 6-5 guy, 220 pounds, maybe once every five, six games. Now you see at least one every week and it seems like everybody's got another one or two waiting to get in the game. It's the story of my life now."

The numbers, at the top of the production scale, bear that out. In 1972 the wide receivers named to the Pro Bowl were tall and skinny, averaging 6-33/4 and 196.4 pounds whilethe cornerbacks named to the Pro Bowl averaged 6-03/4 and 188 pounds. The receivers named to last season's Pro Bowl were more than an inch, on average, taller and 18.8 pounds heavier than the league's elite cornerbacks.

Toss in a rule book tilted toward throwing the football, as well as a generation of the most accurate quarterbacks the league has known, and the challenge of playing "on the island" looks all the more lonely.

"The rules are set up to protect the quarterback and throw the football," Edwards said. "Offenses have evolved, quarterbacks are more accurate and they're daring.

"Offensive coordinators are more daring because they know the rules, being the way they are now. Just throw the ball down the field. And you're playing against shorter DBs. His back is turned away from the quarterback, and two good things are going to happen to you. He's either going to catch it or it's a 50-yard pass interference. You see it game after game, week after week."

Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, one of the most accurate passers in NFL history, takes advantage of mismatches with his receivers. Manning has talked almost every week of putting the ball where his receivers "can go up there and make a play."

Manning hit Thomas for a 41-yard gain in the first quarter last Sunday night when Manning put the ball up high and Thomas leaped and reached over the Saints' trailing defensive backs to reel in the pass.

Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton, meanwhile, admits to taking chances because he knows what Green can do when the ball is in the air.

Blessed with elite body control, an enormous catch radius because of his reach and a 34-inch vertical leap, Green usually comes down with the ball in a crowd.

"He's so rangy. He's got great ball skills. He's got an extra gear when the ball is in the air," Dalton said. "You really have to know when you can take your chances, because a lot of times he's making plays even when he is covered."

Bailey said it has made the initial contact cornerbacks have with receivers, in the 5-yard chuck zone, even more important in man-to-man coverage. But that's where that extra 18.8 pounds can come into play as well.

"Because not only do these guys have speed to run by you, they're strong," Bailey said. "You can't get tangled up. When the big guys can run, that's a whole different thing."

"When you're up in bump-and-run (coverage), I've always said this: You win the play in the first 2 yards," Edwards said. "If you open the gate, in other words if you open your hips and you allow a receiver to get in front of you -- the good receivers now, they cut you off, they always keep you in trail technique. And if you're in trail technique against a wide receiver now, a good one, you have no shot. That's a touchdown, and a lot of 'em."

Local duo joining overseas exhibition excursionFilippo Swartz went to Italy, where his mother was born and he spent the first year or so of his life, every summer until he had to stick around to be a part of summer football activities for the Longmont High School team. Full Story

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story